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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Empirate" data-source="post: 6278078" data-attributes="member: 78958">The way I handle Leadership is quite DM-control heavy, and relies on the assumption that cohorts are just NPCs like everybody else. Usually, the player describes to me roughly what they would like ("a melee bruiser", "a utility caster", "an intelligent problem-solver guy" etc.: no classes mentioned). Then, I would build an NPC using the elite array for stats, NPC equipment, and whatever level of optimization I feel comfortable with for the current game situation.Sometime during the next session or two, the PCs get to meet an NPC who happens to have good reason to get involved with them, and who seems particularly interested in <Leadership Guy>. The player can try to get to know that NPC, strictly in-game, and can try to hire them as a constant companion, based on pure roleplaying. I'll drop a few hints that this is a possible cohort, and won't make the hiring process too difficult, but the player will have to put in some work. Getting to know the cohort, personality-wise as well as where abilities and weaknesses are concerned, is again a strictly roleplaying-focused process - it happened that even after a few levels, a cohort would suddenly whip out a neat trick that the PCs hadn't seen before.The player can also roleplay that s/he doesn't want anything to do with that NPC, and that'll be fine with me. In one case, a player signalled me that she wanted to hire on a particular, already established NPC as her cohort when she took Leadership at 6th level - that was also fine with me, I just needed to provide the guy with some stats.I'll run cohort NPCs myself as a DM, although I'll allow the player to dictate general tactics ("I want him to concentrate on the priest, using his most powerful attacks", "I need him to buff the whole party", "I'd like for her to hang back and target spellcasters"). After the PC knows a little more about what their cohort can do, they can of course use some downtime to talk tactics ("when next we face a spellcaster, I'd like for you to interrupt their casting with your arrows whenever possible", "that Haste spell of yours is great, please prepare it as much as you can and use it everytime things get rough").I'll then see to it that the cohort uses his/her resources to the best of his/her ability, but I also make sure to roleplay them. I try to shoot for a level of optimization similar to what the players can muster - easy for me most of the time, since I understand the game mechanics much better than my players.All in all, the way Leadership is used in my group is to provide some NPC support without eating up a share of XP - that's mostly all the feat does, and I believe it's plenty.</blockquote>

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